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To Participate Or Not?
A portfolio company of mine (which will remain nameless for the purposes of this post) was the topic of conversation on a fairly well known tech blog recently.
I emailed the link to the CEO. The CEO replied back that “they had seen it” and that some of the comments were not correct.
I emailed back that the company might want to weigh in on the comments to correct the inaccuracies. And sent along a link to one of my posts where Magid Abraham, CEO of Comcscore, did just that.
The CEO emailed back that they are having a debate inside the company about how best to handle this issue. Should they weigh in and bring more attention to the post and the comments? Or should they ignore it?
Being the hyper blogger, that I am, I suggested that ignoring blogs is like ignoring the Wall Street Journal these days. I am not sure which has more readers (I do know – I was just making a point).
I post about this email exchange not to prod this particular CEO who is probably cringing as he reads this. He and his team have valid concerns. There are always going to be loud mouths who don’t like a company or a technology and will bash it at every chance they get.
My “Why Are Ads So Hated” post brought out the ad haters in mass the other day. My posts on Comscore certainly surfaced the anti-panels/pro-weblogs crowd. Magid was pretty brave to wade into those comments and he took a few hits for doing it.
But having “lived” in this world for three years now, I can safely say that the companies that take the time to respond in the comments and publish a blog of their own (both are necessary, you really shouldn’t only do one and not the other) are treated with a lot more respect than the companies that just ignore the whole phenomenon.
It makes sense. Blogs are about having a conversation in public with the world. If you don’t want to participate in that conversation, they are going to have it without you and they aren’t going to feel any need to be polite to someone who doesn’t bother to show up.
This makes the marketing job different than it was five years ago. You have to track what is being said about your company. The company that I started this post writing about clearly knows how to do that. So do most companies these days. There are a handful of really good tools to do that. But weighing into the comments and posting directly on your own blog are time consuming efforts that have to be handled well. When you are posting a comment or a post that speaks for an entire company, it has to be well written and persuasive. It’s like writing marketing copy all day long. And I think the CEO’s voice needs to be heard from every once in a while as part of this process.
But maybe this is where marketing is going. Maybe the marketing person can afford to spend a bit less time on the corporate website (make it a blog), the marketing collateral (put the URL on a business card), the PR firm (go straight to the market via blogs). This clearly works in pure web oriented companies today.
For those who are operating in more traditional industries, you probably can’t walk away so quickly from the traditional techniques. But you must pay more than attention to the blogs. You must participate in the conversation.
Comments (11) | Posted November 1, 2006 in Venture Capital and Technology
Comments
Fred -
Couple of thoughts here -- we wrestled with exactly this issue for clients with my old company (Participate.com) back in the day when message boards were what community was -- our advice was always, if you're going to have a community, you can insist upon some guidelines for decorum and respect, but you *must* be willing to wade in and participate (it was a good name for a business!).
The difference nowadays is the choice has been made for you -- you can't "decide" whether or not to host an online community -- it is out there amongst all our blogs, comments, etc. So I personally don't think anyone has a choice -- you've got to wade in.
Having said that, I do think that some things need to change in terms of comments and anonymity. One of the issues I see out there -- and it is especially prevalent in political sites ( I also publish RealClearPolitics.com ) -- is the lack of civility that gets enabled by people hiding behind the veil of anonymity. I think one thing the MSM has always gotten right was that if they used anonymous sources, you were able to trust the publication that at least THEY knew who had written the comment. One thing I love about letters to the editor is that people generally need to use their full name and contact information -- which I think personally elevates the conversation. We are looking into ways to bring just this approach to RCP and other sites we publish -- and my sincere hope is that through approaches like this and also the use of tools like MyBlogLog readers will gravitate to sites and comments where we know who the commenters are.
Posted by: AlFromChicago | Nov 1, 2006 7:57:37 AM
Great post, but think it needs a bit of fleshing out. Obviously, you can't participate on every blog that talks about you otherwise you'll be spending all your time on sites like technorati doing searches of your name and products.
You definitely can't avoid participating all together, but I think there needs to be a priority of blogs to respond to. So if you have a really well known blog - engage. If the blog is fairly well known - think about engaging, but only if there is a gap which needs some truly added value commentary to be made. Relatively well known - occassionaly participate, if you've got the time. Not well known (some out of work developer, trying to make a name for himself with 2 regular readers), don't bother.
Posted by: Farhan | Nov 1, 2006 8:01:51 AM
Farhan --
I think you only need to participate in the most relevant blog post or conversation. The good news is most people are going to find these conversations either through a) bloggers referring back and forth (unfortunately trackbacks aren't used as much) to each other in body of post b) search engines, or c) services such as BuzzTracker (www.buzztracker.com) -- which will automatically aggregate all the given blog posts about around a conversation by analyzing the links.
I think blog etiquette means that most people will post "I see CEO X responded here" and then link to it.
And as more and more tools like MyBlogLog become prevalent this will happen more automatically
Posted by: AlFromChicago | Nov 1, 2006 8:37:20 AM
Fred - great post! I couldn't agree with you more on this topic, as it is one of the motivators for co-founding Kalivo. Companies do need to pay attention to and engage with the blogosphere as part of their marketing function ... not doing so is exactly like ignoring print, radio, or tv in their respective ascendancy. We seek to provide all of the tools in a lightweight manner to simplify the ability for marketers to engage - corporate blog, community, and web crawler wrapped together. Everything is a conversation.
Farhan - I agree with your comment. We're finding that as part of our persistent web crawler, when we produce hits for companies, we need to be able to show relevance - in the form of content and attention (links, comments, views). Many hits are not worth a response, but the critical ones MUST get a response.
Sorry for the small plug, but I think it's relevant to the conversation and it's important to know that there are options for marketers out there to engage on the web and do it efficiently.
Posted by: Brian | Nov 1, 2006 9:25:58 AM
Two examples on why the company should address the problems head on:
Johnson and Johnson - Manifactured Tylenol. Back in the 1980's several people died in Chicagoland from cyanide poisoning from taking cyanide laced tylenol.
Johnson and Johnson addressed this head on. They had press conferences, and took measures to safeguard the product. They took a tragedy and turned it into a triumph.
Second Example:
Arthur Andersen Consulting. This accounting / consulting firm is no longer in business. They were accountants for Worldcom, and Enron among others. Rather than have press conferences and do whatever it takes to get out in front of the crisis, the firm had no comment and reinforced the perception. Thousands of innocent Arthur Andersen employees lost their jobs in addition to Enron, Worldcom, etc.
I think this firm should get out in front of issues and address them as soon as possible. The viral potential of the internet can take a minor issue and turn it into a deal-killer.
Posted by: JEiden | Nov 1, 2006 11:47:17 AM
This post got me curious about whether companies are considering using the back channel to interact with bloggers. It all depends on the specifics of the situation, but direct contact with a blogger is another alternative between commenting and doing nothing. In the case where a blogger is writing about a customer service issue, it may be the most important one.
Posted by: Nathan Gilliatt | Nov 1, 2006 1:34:03 PM
As usual, you seem to have hit the nail on the head.
I personally (and I think most people here at the Blog Business Summit agree with me on this) think it's essential for almost every business to dip their toes into the blogosphere in some manner or another.
I do think, however, that in several cases simply being aware of what blogs are saying an weighing in on comments can be enough. Leaving comments is, regardless of how well your comment is received, showing that you're savvy enough to pay attention to what bloggers are saying, and we appreciate that.
Posted by: Jason Preston | Nov 1, 2006 4:24:21 PM
OK, you've inspired me. I had a similar conversation with a PR person earlier this week, so I've written a bit on responding to bloggers. I'd be very interested to hear from anyone with first-hand experience handling a critical blog post.
Posted by: Nathan Gilliatt | Nov 2, 2006 4:57:52 PM
Fantastic post Fred.
Your client should absolutely set the record straight. Not doing so is like posting a 1-800 number and choosing not to answer the phone when it rings. There are few better opportunities for your company to shine than when a confused customer blogs about you.
"Naked service" is also possibly a firm's most effective word of mouth marketing tool. The people who blog about your company are your vital few -- they control the tipping point of your product's adoption and you can't afford to allow these mavens to misunderstand you.
It's a delicate art though, and a traditional PR approach doesn't work on bloggers. You cannot leave an elephant in the room on a blog so be prepared to be honest and direct or don't join the conservation.
Also, remember that you're a company talking to a person. That's a delicate dynamic. They can get away with saying things that you can't. They are entitled to their opinions. NEVER contradict a blogger's opinion if it is based on fact -- even if it isn't, only correct the facts and then allow them to correct their own opinions -- they normally do. Arguing opinions is a loosing battle and it's a tempting mistake for any proud entrepreneur to make.
Posted by: David G | Nov 2, 2006 8:25:34 PM
Fred - thanks for pointing this out clearly to the more fearful. As an early blog convert who lives at the intersection of the customer and the company, it is still amazing to me how fearful companies are of this medium. Communicators are so entrenched in the old school command and control communication model. Of, course - I do understand this --it is scary to put your self out there - but if you are in the right - the truth will win out. For me it is a no brainre -what low hanging fruit to be able to set the record straight directly!
Posted by: deb schultz | Nov 4, 2006 5:25:21 PM
Greetings for Canada and... Superb Post!
Posted by: Sheamus | Nov 6, 2006 8:25:41 AM
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